Quote: Subcomandante Marcos

"Indigenous Brother, Sister:
Non-Indigenous Brother, Sister:

We are here to say we are here.

And when we say 'we are here,' we also name the other.

Brothers and sisters who are Mexican and who are not Mexican.
With you we say 'we are here,' and we are with you.

We are a mirror.

We are here in order to see each other and to show each other,
so that you may look upon us, so you may look at yourself, so that
the other looks in our looking. We are here and we are a mirror.

Not reality, but merely its reflection.

Not light, but merely a glimmer.
Not path, but merely a few steps.
Not guide, but merely one of the many routes which lead to
tomorrow.

Brother, Sister, Mexico City:

When we say 'we are,' we are also saying 'we are not,' and 'we
shall not be.'
-- Subcomandante Marcos, from Professionals of Hope: he Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marcos, Afterword by Gabriela Jauregui, Brooklyn: The Song Cave, 2017.

FIFA World Cup Photos & Faces

UPDATE: France wins the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, defeating Croatia 4-2 on an own goal by Croatia's Mario Mandzukic (18') , a penalty kick by Antonine Griezmann (38'), and two beautiful goals by Paul Pogba (59') and Kylian Mbappé (65'). Croatia's goals were by Ivan Perisic (28') and Mandzukic (69'), who leapt on a major snafu by France's goalkeeper Hugo Lloris. Croatia dominated the game from start to finish, but France pounced on several chances it got, ensuring itself a championship and giving fans a glimpse of the immense talent the team possessed this year, and will have for a few more World Cups to come.

***

In past years I've provided some imagery to illustrate the World Cup and other major sports competitions (rugby!), so here are a few more photos from the matches. Enjoy!

Dylan Bronn (TUN) trapping the
ball while facing Dele Alli (ENG),
Group G match, Volgograd, June 18, 2018
(Ryan Pierse/Getty Images Europe)

England's players (Lingard, Maguire, Sterling,
Alli, Trippier, Kane) walk out for second half
vs. Sweden, July 7, 2018, in Samara
(Alex Morton/Getty Images Europe)

Midfield Kylian Mbappé before France's
game with Uruguay, July 6, 2018
(Getty Images)

Samuel Umtiti (FRA) battling Paolo Guerrero (PER)
for the ball, June 21, 2018
(Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images Europe)

Nacer Chadli (BEL) tries to control the ball
while facing off against Gabriel Jesus (BRA),
July 6, 2018, in Kazan (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images Europe)

Brazilian players showing dejection after Belgium
goes up 1-0 off Fernandinho's own goal
(l-r Gabriel Jesus, Alisson, Thiago Silva, Fernandinho,
Marcelo, Miranda, Paulinho, Willian), July 6, 2018,
Kazan (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images Europe)

Nigeria's Bryan Idowu, John Obi Mikel and
Oghenekaro Etebo rush to protect the goal
against Argentinian supestar Lionel Messi
in Nigeria's Group D match against Argentina
in Saint Petersburg, June 26, 2018
(Francois Nel/Getty World Images)

Philippe Coutinho (BRA), on the right, races
to keep Romelu Lukaku (BEL) from controlling
the ball, July 6, 2018, in Kazan
(Catherine Ivill/Getty Images Europe) 

Belgian star Romelu Lukaku embraces French former
World Cup champion player and superstar Thierry
Henry, Belgium's assistant coach, after defeating
Brazil in Kazan, July 6, 2018
(Catherine Ivill/Getty Images Europe)

Bryan Idowu (left) and Alex Iwobi (middle) of Nigeria
try to keep Croatia's Luka Modric from reaching the ball
in the Group D match between Nigeria and Croatia,
Kaliningrad, June 16, 2018 (Francois Nel/Getty Images Europe)

Hector Herrara, Jonathan Dos Santos and Hirving Lozano
after their loss to Brazil, July 2, 2018, Samara
(Matthias Hangston/Getty Images Europe)

Cristiano Ronaldo reacting during Portugal's match
against Uruguay, June 30, 2018, in Sochi
(Julian Finney/Getty Images Europe)

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) Wins Mexican Presidency

Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaks
at a press conference in Mexico City, July 3,
2018 (Photo: Manuel Velazquez/Getty Images)
from New York Magazine

Three times can sometimes produce a seismic charm, or so it appears for Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) (1953-), who was finally elected President of Mexico on July 1, this past Sunday. Though a longtime member the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD) and a failed candidate in the contested 2006 and 2012 national elections, AMLO, a former Governor of the Federal District, ran under the aegis of a new left-leaning coalition, Juntos Haremos Historia (Together We Will Make History), that comprised the progressive Movimiento de la Regeneración Nacional (National Regeneration Movement/MORENA) and Partido de Trabajadores (Labor Party/PT) parties with a socially conservative party, Partido Encuentro Social (Social Encounter Party/PES). AMLO will assume office on December 1, 2018, which, given Mexico's current parlous state, will not be a moment too soon.

AMLO's chief rivals in this year's presidential election were Ricardo Anaya of the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party/PAN), the center-right party of former president Vicente Fox (who served from 2000-2006) an antagonist of US Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump; José Antonio Meade of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party/PRI), the neoliberal, longtime ruling party to which incumbent president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) belongs; and two independent candidates, Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, who had previously become the first independent candidate to win a state governorship when he helmed Nuevo Leon; and Margarita Zavala, a noted lawyer, and the wife of former president and PAN figurehead Felipe Calderón (in office from 2006-2012).

In essence, AMLO was not just leading a visibly left coalition but represented the only left-leaning option for Mexican voters in this presidential election. As the campaign progressed, Mexico's political and social elites grew increasingly alarmed, and perhaps rightly so. Yet the hiccuping economy, metastasizing violence, which even marked the lead-up to the election, and continuing allegations of extensive, high-level government corruption, blunted the right's blizzard of "Mexico will turn into Venezuela"-scare tactics, some with racist and classist tones, including advertisements, robocalls, videos, and social media attacks, not unlike ones that had doomed AMLO's chances in the prior two elections.

In one instance, a PRI operative named Enrique Ochoa Reza tweeted that PRI politicians who switched parties to MORENA were "Prietos que no aprietan" (Dark-skinned/black people who can't get a hold), playing on the double meanings of "moreno/a" (brown/black man/woman) and "prieto" (dark/black person), as well as the feminine form of the former word (morena=brown woman/black woman) and the verb aprietar (not being able to keep somebody). Ochoa Reza did apologize for the racist aspect of his slur, but not the misogynistic one. Additionally, there were allegations of US and Guatemalan meddling in the campaign, and Ochoa Reza accused Russia of interfering on behalf of AMLO, a charge the eventual victor laughed off.

The attacks, however numerous and outrageous, could not overcome Mexican voters disgust at the current state of affairs. AMLO won in a landslide, defeating Anaya by 21 percentage points while winning 53% of the total vote and popular vote. The final tally in an election that saw a 63.6% turnout (or 56.6 million voters out of 89.9 registered voters) was as follows, with AMLO winning 31 of Mexico's 32 states, and the first outright majority for a presidential candidate since 1989:

2018 Mexican Presidential Candidate & Party	Vote Total
AMLO (National Regeneration Movement/Juntos Haremos Historia)	30,112,109
Ricardo Anaya (PAN/Por México al Frente)	12,609,472
José Antonio Meade (PRI/Todos por México)	9,289,378
Jaime Rodríguez Calderón (Independent)	32,743
Margarita Zavala (Independent)	31,983

While his ideology has long been diametrically opposed to what we see with a figure like Donald Trump, they share a vocal populist nationalism, AMLO's rooted in the left and democratic socialism instead of Trump's ethnonationalist and racist authoritarian approach. What this might mean for the cozy relationship between Mexico's large corporations and land owners and the government and for an approach to a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that privileges international structures and rules over the country's laws remains to be seen, but given the Juntos Haremos Historia/MORENA's capture of 312 of 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and the strong popular mandate for the coalition and new president, AMLO could throw wrenches in Mexico's steady march towards privatization and economic (classical) liberalization, in favor of policies that more effectively and immediately address the rising economic inequality and insecurity that millions of Mexicans are facing.

During the campaign AMLO announced that he would push to reform some of the perks of the presidency, including cutting his salary and that of top officials, selling presidential planes, creating a public park out of the presidential grounds, and ending the lifetime pension former presidents receive, with the savings being directed towards Mexican seniors, who have a far less secure and comparatively robust retirement savings system than US's fixed pensions, 401K savings plans, and Social Security (which itself is admittedly always under threat from US conservatives and neoliberals). He also attacked the International Monetary Fund as an enabler of and participant in Mexico's corruption, suggesting he might pull back not just from the IMF but from other international financial systems that have long kept Mexico under yoke. One key question would be how projected new NAFTA negotiations might change as a result of this approach.

As Nathaniel Parish Flannery argues in a recent Forbes article, "The AMLO Era: Why Mexico's 2018 Election Matters," nearly half of Mexicans live in poverty, and despite the country's prowess in manufacturing, wages remain abysmal. Stemming governmental corruption and addressing the country's sluggish growth rate, rising economic and social inequality, the persistent lack of jobs in the formal economy, and low, stagnant wages across all labor sectors could have beneficial, ramifying effects on all aspects of Mexican society. The question for AMLO and Mexico's congress is how to spur all of this such that all the wealth does not continue to flow upwards to the relatively tiny sector of rich elites. Strategies to create a viable and vibrant middle class, which would necessitate a retreat from the neoliberalization of the prior PRI and PAN administrations, transformed tax and business policies, support for public education and farmers, and a strengthened safety net, could be among AMLO's and the new left-leaning Congress's potential steps.

Some of this, beyond NAFTA talks, will hinge on the "new relationship" AMLO has vowed to forge with Mexico's often domineering neighbor the United States. While the US and Mexico are among each others' largest trading partners and cooperate extensively in a range of areas, the two current leaders, Trump and Peña Nieto, have been at loggerheads, in part because of Trump's persistent attacks on Mexico and Mexicans, beginning the day he announced his presidential campaign and slandered Mexican immigrants, and because Peña Nieto understandably has refused to pay for Trump's desired border wall. AMLO has already challenged the border wall idea in a pamphlet he published, entitled Oye Trump (Listen Up, Trump). One goal AMLO outlined was development of Mexico's "internal market," so that "Mexicans can work and be happy where they were born, where their family is, where their customs and cultures are." Creating an expanding middle class is crucial to ensuring this market can flourish, and to transforming the migrant flows.

Another challenge for AMLO will be to figure out a way to lower the violence that has plagued Mexico. Neither Calderón's nor Peña Nieto's approaches worked; corruption remains endemic at all levels, and organized crime is strong as well. In addition, since September 2017, 130 political figures, from the municipal to the national level, have been murdered, and journalists across Mexico have been targeted for investigative and critical work. AMLO supposedly has suggested amnesty for low-level drug offenders, which sparked criticism, but it also is the case that Peña Nieto's initial policy approach of militarized attacks on the cartels failed, as did prior attempts to negotiate with organized crime. Rising pay for all workers, and better wages for domestic security and military forces could help to thwart the power of organized crime to infiltrate them, but AMLO also has suggested a "peace plan," involving human rights organizations, religious organizations, among others, to negotiate a decline in the murder rate.

I see less of a parallel with Hugo Chavez, to who AMLO has been repeatedly compared, and more of one with the presidency of Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, Brazil's now imprisoned but still widely popular former president. Formerly a firebrand leftist from his country's Worker's Party, Lula lost three elections before finally becoming president in 2003, and governed for two terms. Lula moderated his platform in his successful campaign, presiding over a series of liberalized economic policies that on the one hand led to considerable growth, but which included a range of social policies that helped lift millions of Brazilians out of poverty, increased Brazil's safety net, and created a visible if fragile middle class. Unfortunately, Lula did not target systemic corruption with the same zeal, and now finds himself crucified not only because of his opponents' vengeance, but as a result of his and his successor's failure to truly wrestle with the beast of corruption during the height of their successes. With AMLO, domestic economic policies and global financial trends could prove his ally or enemy, but a failure to address systemic corruption, impossible a task as that may be, could destroy not only the tremendous support he now enjoys, but damn his and his coalition's future, let alone Mexico, for decades to come.

Poem: Roberto Bolaño

Recently I was reading the New York Review of Books' online blog and saw that they had posted the following poem, lineated prose really, by Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003). It will appear in The Unknown University, a volume of his complete poetry--which he wrote before he turned to the prose on which his reputation rests--translated by Laura Healy, who also translated his other two collections, The Romantic Dogs (2000, published in English in 2008) and Tres (2000, published in English in 2011) to be published in a few weeks by New Directions.

As unlyrical as the following poem is, the gravity of its content does merit note; in the last decade of his life Bolaño managed to write a dozen books, some of which, including his masterpieces The Savage Detectives (1998, published in English translation in 2007), By Night in Chile (2000, published in English translation in 2003), and 2666 (2004, published in English translation in 2008), one of the greatest and most original novels in Spanish or any other language. In the poem below, he prefigures the decade to come: serious illness, unearthly fortitude, furious composition. Among the works he produced to the very end were poems, despite his fame as a fiction writer, as he never stopped seeing himself as a poet.

Toward the end of 1992 he was very sick
and had separated from his wife.
That was the goddamn truth:
he was alone and fucked
and he tended to think there was little time left.
But dreams, oblivious to sickness,
showed up every night
with a loyalty that came to surprise him.
Dreams took him to that magical country
he and no one else called Mexico City
and Lisa and the voice of Mario Santiago
reading a poem
and so many other good things worthy
of the most ardent praise.
Sick and alone, he would dream
and confront the days that passed inexorably
toward the end of another year.
And from it he gathered a bit of strength and courage.
Mexico, the phosphorescent steps in the night,
the music playing on corners
where in the past whores would freeze
(in the icy heart of Colonia Guerrero)
and would dole him out the sustenance needed
to clench his teeth
and not cry in fear.

This poem is drawn from The Unknown University, an edition of Roberto Bolaño’s complete poetry, translated by Laura Healy, to be published on July 11 by New Directions.

Henry Louis Gates's Black in Latin America

Gates talks with
Brazilian rapper,
MV Bill

Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s 4-part PBS series Black in Latin America, which ran for each of the last four Tuesdays, has concluded, and all of the episodes are available free online. I have deep respect for Gates as a scholar, intellectual leader and institution-builder, but I must admit that I was a bit wary about this series after I saw some of the pre-broadcast clips on The Root's website. Based on these trailers, my two main fears were that Gates might oversimplify things and that he would allow some of his presuppositions to overwhelm the discussion. For example, in the Brazil trailer, Gates, who has written extensively about race and racism, fails to disarticulate the differences between between Brazilian names for skin colors and racial categories and identities in Brazil, while also failing to historicize these categories or broach contemporary discussions of them. He even denies that the lighter-skinned man can be negro (black). Here we go...I thought. But this thankfully was only a snippet.

Musicians perform at the Toro de Patate

In fact, Gates's discussion of race, and in particular, of blackness and black people in 6 Latin American countries--Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru--turned out to be one of the best, concise introductions to the topic I've come across in a while. He not only did not oversimplify, but he repeatedly challenged some of his own assumptions. In the background for me always as these episodes unfolded were magisterial overviews like the late Leslie B. Rout Jr.'s The African Experience in Latin America (Cambridge, 1976; Wiener, 2003), John Thornton's Africa and Africans and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Cambridge, 1998), and George Reid Andrews' Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000 (Oxford, 2004), as well as numerous excellent historical, sociological, and other kinds of studies on the specific countries.  Given how little many Americans know about our own national history (histories)--given how much I myself am always learning about moments that I have previously studied, like the US Civil War, from the New York Times's Disunion Series--I did not expect even a handful of Gates' viewers to know much of what could be found in these or similar books, and it was clear that he didn't either. This lack of knowledge included, it was refreshingly clear at times, himself.

Gates in Cuba with the son music group, Septeto Típico de Sones

Each of the episodes ran for an hour, so Gates had to shoehorn quite a bit into a small slot, and given the long histories of each of these countries (Hispaniola's going back to 1492, let us not forget). In the cases of the DR and Haiti, and later Mexico and Peru, he split the episodes in half.  I still believe Haiti alone deserved an hour, and that this particular episode did not take into account more recent and popular racial self-representations among younger Dominicans. That said, Gates' overall presentation of the processes and dynamics of historical development, the role of economics and politics in racial and cultural formation (incluing discursively), and the effects of US hegemony, particularly in the Caribbean, illuminated a great deal about each of these countries and their societies.  He thoughtfully consulted scholars, archivists, and activists from each of the countries, sometimes bringing to light, through minor details, what 1000 words might not fully convey. To give one example, in visiting a museum that housed the late Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo's effects, he and the curator examined a large pot of white (rice?) powder that Trujillo used to whiten his skin. The pot was still nearly full, and its contents blindingly white--as I glimpsed it I thought of the well of racial self-loathing this man possessed, of his ghostly, murderous face looming before me, and a shiver ran up my spine as I considered what terror it must have struck in the eyes and backbones of the Dominicans, Haitians and others (like Venezuela's Rómulo Bettencourt, whom Trujillo attempted to assassinate).

Chebo Ballumbrosio and his family with Gates

The Cuban and Brazilian episodes were the best, in that Gates had the time to delve more deeply than most commentators do about each of these countries, debunking something I have seen up close, Cuba's myth of having abolished racism (officially, perhaps, yes, in reality, no) and Brazil's "racial democracy." In the case of Brazil, Gates started in Salvador da Bahia, the heart of black Brazil, but traveled to other cities--Rio de Janeiro and, quite surprisingly, Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, the huge, populous interior state built, from the 17th century onwards, on mining--to explore questions of blackness, race and racism.  Anyone watching would have grasped the complexities of Brazil's history, but also parallels with the US in terms of how economic activities, geography, and so on, affected the system and practice of slavery.  Most revelatory for me, perhaps because I was reminded of information I had forgotten, was his episode on Mexico, and its intrinsic but obscured black history. From the slave ports to its maroon societies to the role of black Mexicans in the country's liberation, I think it's fair to say that almost none of this history is known or even mentioned in the United States, and, as Gates suggested, remains obscure even to many (most?) Mexicans, save those direct or semi-direct descendants of the Africans in places like Veracruz and the Costa Chica. One of the many great flashes of insight during this episode occurred when an Afro-Mexican interlocutor suggested to Gates that it would be better for Jesse Jackson to forgo protesting about the racist Memín Penguín cartoon figure and to spend more time taking interesting and advocating for black Mexicans living in the United States! I think most Americans, including Mexican Americans, would be surprised to know that black Mexicans are living in the US, and thus facing the same issues as other Latino immigrants and other black Americans, let alone that there are (not just were) blacks in Mexico.  To moreover hear this uttered on television, to hear someone break the silence about a group over whom a veil of ignorance still lies, was startling in the best way.

Gates talk with Bernard Diederich at Haiti's Fort Dimanche

Seeing the parallels between all these countries is in itself quite illustrative; so too is to consider how far blacks in the United States have come, for a variety of reasons, long before the election of President Barack H. Obama, whose election is the result not only of the long black struggle for freedom but also of its effects on white Americans and, more broadly, everyone in this country.  What Gates' show suggested more than once, however, is that in some cases other countries, like Mexico, were ahead of us in terms of racial attitudes, far ahead of us, in some ways, and yet the struggles that black people are battling in these countries are perhaps now multiple generations behind where black Americans were a while ago. What his series suggested too was the ways in which the slave trade also impacted Africa, especially the western and southwestern regions of that continent, an aspect of our global and hemispheric histories that still does not merit enough attention or discussion.  Unfortunately, I doubt enough people will see these episodes to deepen knowledge either about the presence or experiences of black people in Latin America or change a great deal of public and private discussions about race, racism, blackness, immigration, or anything else. (I can hope, though.) Indeed, I don't think that a sizable enough number of black Americans, or Latinos who are not black, will watch these shows, let alone white people, though we all would benefit from knowing more about the histories of all of these societies, especially given how deeply implicated the US and its political, economic, social and cultural politics and policies have been in many of them (cf. DR, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico).  But I know that's unlikely to happen, and that particularly those in power will continue to speak and act from positions of gross, sometimes willful ignorance about such things, since they benefit from the ignorance and the divisions and diversions it sows. PBS, however, is doing us all a huge favor by making the videos freely available, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. has done us a tremendous favor by producing these informative gems at all.

FIFA 2010 World Cup Underway

Amid my reading of the final versions of the novellas, and the conceptual art projects, I've taken some time to catch some of the FIFA 2010 World Cup games, which began yesterday with host country South Africa's match against Mexico. To the relief of the South Africans, and perhaps the Mexican fans, the match resulted in a 1-1 tie. Draws in fact have dominated the tournament's first day; in the other opening day match, France and Uruguay finished 0-0. On Day 2, today, South Korea trounced Greece 2-0, while Argentina beat Nigeria 1-0, and nearly scored several more.
The match to catch (and I missed it because I've been at a poetics conference), however, was England vs. the USA. Despite having a team packed with Premier League stars, England could only manage a 1-1 tie, which counts almost as a win for the Americans.  The game started in heart-dropping fashion for the US when English midfield Stephen Gerrard scored only 4 minutes into the contest, based on a defensive lapse, the sort of harbinger of a US debacle to come. Yet the Americans were able to hang on from that point onwards, even surviving a potential injury to their star goalie, Tim Howard, when England forward Emile Heskey slid cleet-first into the Howard's chest, and, in one of the most remarked moments of the tournament thus far, tied things when Clint Dempsey kicked a squibbler towards the English net and goalkeeper Robert Green couldn't hold onto it before it crossed the goal-line. From that point onwards the US team made no significant mistakes, despite being outshot 10-4 and corner-kicked 8-4. A great deal of credit goes to Howard for unflappable play, and to Dempsey and Jozy Altidore, who nearly got another US goal, for penetrating the English defense.

Tomorrow's games should provide some excitement, though I forsee Germany tromping over Australia, and Ghana v. Serbia ending a tie while I predict Slovenia will defeat the unheralded Algerians. The game I'm waiting for is Brazil's opening match, on Tuesday, against North Korea. In tribute to the match, I even wore my Brazil socks yesterday.  Below are a few of the photos from the games that I was able to cull thus far.

South Africa's goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune (R) and defender Aaron Mokoena (C) try to stop Mexico's striker Giovani dos Santos (L) from scoring during their 2010 World Cup group A first round football match on June 11, 2010 at Soccer City stadium in Soweto, suburban Johannesburg. (GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)

South Africa's midfielder Kagisho Dikgacoi vies with Mexico's striker Giovani dos Santos during their Group A first round 2010 World Cup football match on June 11, 2010 at Soccer City stadium in Soweto, suburban Johannesburg. South Africa and Mexico play in the opening match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. (PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP/Getty Images)

Monday Round-up

A few blips today: What wonderful news that Mexico City will become the first capital in Latin America (and the third in North America, after Ottawa and Washington, DC?) to ensure marriage equality, with its city assembly's passage of a same-sex marriage bill. The bill passed 39-20, with 5 abstentions. According to this BBC News report, the bill changes "the definition of marriage in the city's civic code - from the union of a man and a woman to 'the free uniting of two people.'"

I meant to post a congratulations to Annise Parker on her victory in the Houston mayoral race a week ago (December 12), but that post vanished into the ether, so let me belatedly do so. Parker becomes the first out lesbian to lead one of the US's top 5 largest cities, and probably among the first to lead a major city in one of the former states of the Confederacy.


Annise Parker, Houston's new mayor (Advocate.com)

Speaking of leadership, Drew Westen, the noted linguist, author of Metaphors We Live By and The Political Brain, and Emory professor, has a devastating article in today's Huffington Post on Obama's lack of leadership, laissez-faire style and content-free politics, and their effects on policies and the Democratic base and independents. (I'll try to write more about this tomorrow.)

Though he may be hands-off when it comes to major issues (the health care reform bill, the global warming/climate change/green technology crisis, the ongoing economic debacle, etc.) or too much of a Bushite (with his own "surge" in Afghanistan, continuation of infinite detentions and the Patriot Act, refusal to prosecute the criminal element that led the US over the last 8 years, etc.), Obama has been very good about appointing Latinos to government posts, many of them Harvardians. He's outpacing both W and his avatar*, Clinton. On the symbolism joint, he's got his act together.


Thomas E. Pérez, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division (mainjustice.com)

In case you were wondering what's in this crapola insurance and pharma-giveaway bill we're all supposed to get behind and believe is the best thing since Medicare or Social Security, McJoan at DailyKos gives a rundown. It's many eggs short of a dozen, no matter how prettily Sheldon Whitehouse and his colleagues try to dress up the carton.

Speaking of Avatar, which I haven't yet seen but am rather curious about, not everyone is rhapsodizing the film. Annalee Newitz at io9 asks, "When will white people stop making movies like 'Avatar'?" Nihilistic Kid offers a funnier but similarly cogent political take. And poet Ruthellen Kocher poses important questions about colonialism and how to discuss this with her youngster when seeing the film.


Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, in Avatar (telegraph.co.uk)

Speaking of colonialism, client states, and warmongering, I keep asking anyone who'll listen: what is really and currently going on in Iraq? On the flight overseas, I came across this New York Times article about black Iraqis. Why hasn't there been more reportage of this? Does the President, a great inspiration to them, know or even care what's going on over there?

I am behind on New Yorkers (by weeks now--this means my graduate fiction students next quarter may not have to read so many of this year's stories), but I enjoyed the snarky piece, "To the MAXXII" (only the audio slideshow's online) on Pritzker Prize-winning artist and architect Zaha Hadid, who's finally seeing her visions realized. Why does the writer keep commenting on her clothes, though? Would this happen to a male (st)architect? Also, Joan Accocella's short commentary on Geoffrey Chaucer-related books and Peter Ackroyd's butchered "translation" of The Canterbury Tales was a highlight. Note to authors: some books do not need to be "updated."

Lastly, it appears that residents of Laredo, Texas, a city of over 250,000 people, will be without a single chain or independent bookstore very soon. Barnes & Noble is closing its "profitable" B. Dalton outlet there, because it's not...bringing in enough money! Disgraceful.

Weekend Notes

I saw today that President Elect Obama is backing the laid off workers who've staged a sit-in since the beginning of this weekend at the Republic Windows & Doors plant (here) in Chicago. The roughly 300 employees were told on Tuesday that because of financial problems caused by Bank of America's cancelation of a line of credit, they would be let go by the end of the week, which was last Friday; one problem is that they didn't receive severance or benefit pay. The article implies the union is working to resolve the issue, while the owners of the company are engaging in shell games and not responding to media queries about what's going. Local politicians are condemning Bank of America, which is an easy target since it's one of the few remaining banking behemoths, although it's doubtful that such posturing will have any effect. Meanwhile, the protesting workers are wondering when they'll get their pay and what will they do just as the holiday season is rolling around. Any bailout coming for them and the hundreds of thousands now out on the street?

+++

To add insult to injury, the parent company of the newspaper to which I'm linking, the vaunted Chicago Tribune, for decades the Second (now Third) City's leading, conservative paper, is on the knife's edge of bankruptcy. As in, it could come as swiftly as this week. The Tribune Company's owner, Sam Zell, took the company private for about $8 billion, an insane amount even factoring in the portfolio's sterling pieces, the Chicago Cubs, and the major league baseball temple, Wrigley Field, neither of which he can unload right now, and repeated decimating waves at the company's various units, including the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, and the Tribune paper itself, haven't brought in the fantastical revenue needed to service the debt. As I wrote to some correspondents earlier, "the media entities under Tribune control are like those insects that are devoured from the inside out, leaving the appearance, though sickly, of being alive, while being utterly hollow on the inside." Well, not completely hollow, but they're getting there, and we can certainly thank greed and deregulation, alongside the technological challenges the newspaper industry is facing, for hastening these events. At this rate, the nation's second and third largest cities could find themselves with one less major newspaper by January 1, 2009, if things continue on the track they're on now.

(On yet another point, this grim news about the publishing industry came out last week. As James Schuyler once wrote, another day, another dolor.)

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On a completely different note, I found Marc Lacey's New York Times article on the muxe, transgender/gender-queering people and related social matrix in Oaxaca, Mexico, both fascinating and a bit confounding. Confounding because the article proceeds as if, despite the wealth of material on gender and sexuality among indigenous peoples and a great deal of work on global performances of gender and sexuality, and despite the extensive contemporary discourse in gender studies and queer theory, there were little context whatsoever beyond the notion there are gay people, there are straight people, and there are some men who don't exactly fit either category but many of them dress up like women, consider themselves women, assume important roles in their community and are mostly and widely accepted, yet how do we define them according to the very fixed rubric of gay/straight? (Of course the word "lifestyle" has to enter the picture!) Etc. I say this not to criticize Lacey so much as to note that for the umpteenth time I'm registering the vast gulf between how things are discussed within academe and outside it, here in the putative newspaper of record. What might an article that were graspable by most readers yet that took into account contemporary discourse on gender and sexuality look like? How might it read so that anybody could read and engage in and with it, and how might academics, and non-academics open up conversations even more to make this happen?

“Thalía,” who was named princess the night before at a vela, or community celebration, for the muxes, waits for a parade to begin (New York Times, Katie Orlinsky)

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I was going to write about how I've been baking bread of late, and how it deepened my appreciation first for anyone who does this regularly, for homemade food and cooking, for the felicities of the Internet as an archive and resource, for the simple and profound joy you can derive from successfully accomplishing a task of this sort, for C's marvelous examples as a cook, for my ancestors who had to do this sort of thing with far less at hand, for the delight of finding another way to be thrifty, for finding a way to take my mind of the mounting stacks of material to be read and my own glacially proceeding writing projects, and for the ending of Raymond Carver's famous story "A Small, Good Thing," which I regularly teach and which, despite its evident exemplary status in the contemporary, American realist canon, still carries a faint whiff of the ridiculous with its suggesting that devouring freshly baked bread might create an affective, emotional and social bridge between a grieving couple, parents who've lost their only son, and a crank of a baker whose isolation has led him to behave in an unconscionable way. But then, I made and baked and ate this bread--C. had already done so a number of times--and I realized that Carver might be on to something. I'm not saying that freshly baked bread is the best offering to patch up a broken friendship or any other sort of inimical situation, but the smell of the bread coming out of the oven, and the taste, with just a little butter, or olive oil, or olive tapenade, is enough to calm even pretty severe personal tensions. Or at least I thought so after this last loaf came out of the oven. It really is delicious. Since I've heard that a few readers enjoyed the mulled wine, I'll post a recipe for the bread soon. I need to try it a few more times to make sure I've got it right, and then I'll post it here. A photo, though, of the penultimate loaf: